What Kind of Year is 2022 Going to Be?
Don’t Click This, Because I’m Going to Ruin Your Day
I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see a year end as 2021. It was a terrible, painful, creepy, dismal, horrible, awful year. It’ll go down in history, for many reasons, all of which bring me to a question you’re probably wondering about. What kind of year will 2022 be?
When I write these posts, I have a long, tedious internal debate. Should I lie to you, or should I give it to you straight? I err, as usual, on the side of truth. So don’t read this post if you just want to, well, enjoy your day. Go play with the dog, do some shopping, hang out with the family. I don’t recommend reading this post until maybe June or July, to be honest.
Here’s how the year is going to go, more or less. Please note these aren’t “predictions.” They’re just…some pretty obvious conclusions.
2022 will be the year we give up on fighting the pandemic. You can see it happening already. Here’s an astonishing story about some random doctor — who’s being given airtime to amplify a woefully foolish message — let’s stop reporting case numbers. That’s just one tiny dot in a larger trend. We’re weary of it, as societies. Tired of it. We want life to go “back to normal.”
So it’ll go something like this. Pundits will proclaim the pandemic’s ending (which they’ve been doing since the Alpha wave of 2021), and just like is happening now, by and large, people will believe them. Desperately wanting the pandemic to end, we’ll give up on fighting it instead, and think that the latter is the former.
Then, probably, right on cue, around summertime, a new variant will arrive — just like Delta did. Will it be milder? More severe? That’s a roll of the viral dice. Now we’re playing roulette with the future. Societies will go into panic and shock all over again — because they believed the “pandemic was over.” That variant will — if we’re lucky — abate. The pandemic will be over — again. Until winter’s variant arrives. Cue the shock and panic and disbelief all over again.
You should know this cycle of ignorance and folly by now. It’s how we got here — and it’s not going away. No, Omicron isn’t Covid “evolving to become less severe.” No, pandemics don’t magically…
